More Like This

Preview

This chapter analyzes North Carolina's decision to disfranchise all free blacks at its 1835 state constitutional convention. The push for disfranchisement of free blacks in North Carolina was led not only by white egalitarians seeking ideological consistency but also by some conservatives eager to free their election districts from the influence of free black voters. These conservatives, who generally opposed constitutional reform, couched their public arguments against free black suffrage in terms of drawing a bright line between white citizens and black denizens much as egalitarians did,...

This chapter analyzes North Carolina's decision to disfranchise all free blacks at its 1835 state constitutional convention. The push for disfranchisement of free blacks in North Carolina was led not only by white egalitarians seeking ideological consistency but also by some conservatives eager to free their election districts from the influence of free black voters. These conservatives, who generally opposed constitutional reform, couched their public arguments against free black suffrage in terms of drawing a bright line between white citizens and black denizens much as egalitarians did, though conservatives also expressed the more elitist notion that black disfranchisement would free their election districts from the “corruption” and tendency to mobocracy they associated with free black voting.